Līva

Līva Strazdiņa (tp/flh/Komp. & Arr.)

• Laurie Rich (p)

• Florian Schultz (git)

• Vincent Niessen (b)

• Lucas Johnson (dr)

One passion, two instruments. Līva Strazdiņa, a native Berliner with Latvian roots, plays the trumpet and flugelhorn, and also composes. Now it’s all coming together: she is releasing her debut album, *Unspoken*, featuring many of her own compositions, alongside a cover of *Honesty* (Billy Joel) and an arrangement of the popular Latvian folk song *Pūt Vējiņi*.

Some pieces are immediate reflections on concrete experiences, so Misfortune Happens Sometimes was created after a failed concert recording. In general, Līva tells in her music about experiences, sensations, encounters and everyday life. As she shifts her trumpet approach, the exercises require frequent breaks—she uses them to write concerted breaks. Four Ants arises from a rehearsal situation. You might think it was about ants; and if you will, the piece sounds like a happily wandering ant people through the forest.

In fact, however, it is a pun with ‘four ants’ and ‘four and’, a counting time in music.

The trumpeter recorded her debut album with musician friends who enriched the production with their personal style and musical expertise: Max Hacker on tenor saxophone and alto flute, Florian Schultz on guitar, Laurie Rich on piano, Christian Cuevas-Müller on double bass, and Bastian Menz on drums.

To this day, Līva draws inspiration and influence from Billy Joel, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Kendrick Lamar and others. This is evident on her debut album in the cover version of Joel’s ‘Honesty’, a song that has been a constant presence throughout her youth and which she has now recorded as an instrumental piece. Owing to her family roots in Latvia, Līva explores Latvian pop and folk music, which she grew up with and which she encounters time and again in her second home.

Līva Strazdiņa (born 1997) studied with Sebastian Studnitzky, Malte Burba, Simon Harrer and Till Brönner, amongst others, at the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music in Dresden. She has been playing the piano since childhood and the trumpet and flugelhorn since the age of thirteen. In 2020, she began working on her own compositions.

With *Unspoken*, Līva aims to share impressions drawn from her innermost experiences. The album invites listeners to recognise themselves in these emotions and to reflect on their own emotional world – to get to know Līva through her music, and to discover themselves through Līva’s music.

In their urgency, a real discovery for me. Valuable. Go!

• Till Brönner